This week, I was given feedback on the MRI animation draft. To best represent an actual flow of an MRI machine, the lines would need to be curvy and smooth in the animation. The line before had some sharp curves and slightly jagged.
Original Version:
New Version:
Now that I have approval on the new image still, I will be able to create the new animation draft.
This was a short week, because I missed 2 days due to a Epstein-Barr virus. Fun! I’m still a little under the weather, but not infectious airborne, so as long as I don’t lick too many people or surfaces around the office I should be fine.
So, this has been an interesting exercise in subjectivity. It turns out it’s a little difficult to select rights-free, high-quality stock photos of often very specific French vocabulary words that don’t have an English equivalent, and are also in the city of Beirut, Lebanon, which seems to have a dearth of any stock photos. Some of them I simply had to use the more aesthetically pleasing French equivalent. What’s sad is that I love Middle Eastern Architecture, but photogenic stock photo sites are heavily biased towards European cities 🙁
Not only that, but from my understanding, Lebanon and Beirut in particular have been handed some unfortunate economics recently. From my brief historical research, Beirut was apparently once referred to as the “Paris of the Middle East” before a civil war a few decades ago, and more recently, a massive industrial accident and subsequent national economic decline. Not a lot of stock photographers heading there lately, I suppose. 343 Unsplash results for “Beirut” and 10,000+ for “Paris.”
Well, the monument photo is still very pretty!
Technically started this Monday of week XLVIII, but I’ll post a brief update here.
In addition to the complete staff poster, we’re making individual team posters this year, and I’m in charge of Video. Since the overall theme is European Soccer, the idea is for the poster to kinda look like this.
All I’ve done so far is cut out the ‘action pose’ photos for the video team, but the stack of layers does look like some kind of quirky collage already. Maybe I’ll just use this.
This week I had a minor edit to complete on the GOV310L intro. I just needed to change “Presidency” to “The Presidency” and “Courts” to “The Courts”.
Project: STA Blog Portrait
Start: September 7th 2022
Complete: September 13th 2022
Here is my STA Blog self-portrait. To make the persona consistent, I choose the same color palette as my banner for my portrait :).
Project: StyleA/B Course Graphics
Start: September 13th 2022
Complete: September 15th 2022
Staff Guidance: Adrain
Since eco-centric design could be described as “design for nonhuman-center design” or”design for the ecosystem”, I choose dark green from the approved color palette of UT to fit the theme.
For style B, I found the cuttlefish pictures in the portfolio website from professor Jiabao Li’s project and it really fits in the context.
Project: STA Design Team Poster
Start: September 13th 2022
To be Completed: September 29th 2022
Staff Guidance: Valerie
I drew several simple sketches for the Design team. The central world cup icon is the representation of our design team spirit with the design of its details (I haven’t worked on this part yet). I’ll also place the team logo in the center once I finish designing it. The eight drops around are analogous to the paint trails (when they develop well in Photoshop later). STA busts are placed inside the drops. There are just rough prototypes that show my idea.
Started: September 13, 2022
Completed: September 15, 2022
Staff Guidance: Valerie
I made my self-portrait for the STA blog! I took style inspiration from one of my favorite science YouTubers, Kurzgesagt.
Started: September 15, 2022
To Be Completed: Probably September 20
Staff Guidance: Maddy
I worked on the first half of the Course Graphics training, focusing on Style A. Here’s what I have so far (screenshots from Basecamp):
The power point I’ll be switching to the regular .PPTX soon, I just exported it initial as two .jpeg files.
And then here’s the stingers:
Started: September 19, 2022
Completed: September 19, 2022
Staff Guidance: Maddy
Today I also did a quick little recolor of the Contextualization & Commemoration Initiative logo to a slightly different shade of red. The first picture below is the original, second is the recolor!
(9/14 – 9/15)
VOTING PSA GRAPHIC
I was asked to illustrate/redraw the preexisting icons on a Voting PSA to make them look more hand-drawn. Maddy and I worked on reconfiguring the composition so that the flow of the word placement was better. We also decided to replace the icon with one that more directly referenced voting. The overall color palette and font families stayed relatively the same.
Layout 1 & 2
1st Layout with All Elements:
Voting Graphic PSA 2022 (final)
(9/9 – 9/12)
STA AVATAR & BANNER
For STA Orientation I had to create a banner for my blog page, as well as a head-to-toe avatar of myself for the STA group photo. I used Procreate (which I am gradually getting more comfortable with) to sketch and render my avatar. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the gradient background on my banner. I also sourced the font from Fontpair.co and used it for my name, major, and graduation date. I was thinking about adding more elements, however, it ended up distracting from my name and the gradient background that I worked through much trial and error to achieve:,) I am very satisfied with the results! 
